


The Double Edge

by ErinDarroch



Series: Remain in Light [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Angst, Ben and Breha Solo, Breha Solo - Freeform, Dreams, F/M, Family, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Sensitivity, HSLO, Han Solo Lives, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Related, Love, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Romance, Sweet, The Force, han/leia - Freeform, hanxleia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 13:46:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7760116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinDarroch/pseuds/ErinDarroch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post-<em>TFA</em> AU. The Force has awoken in some very strange places. On the way to rejoin the Resistance and reunite with their daughter, Han and Leia grapple with the some of the more sinister implications of recent events. </p><p>This is another "missing" chapter of <em>Remain in Light</em>. It falls between chapters 13 and 14, and follows after "Recursion".</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Double Edge

**-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-**

Han Solo steps out of the shadows and moves towards the narrow catwalk, keeping his arm extended and his grip tight. The business-end of his blaster tracks the movements of the lean, helmeted figure stalking away from him over the long bridge. Han has been here before, but he lacked full understanding then. This time, he knows exactly what he’s dealing with: the menacing, powerful figure in those black robes is a monster. And that monster is also his son.

Han feels the weight of that responsibility; the terrible guilt and shame of having failed to protect his child from harm. But the harm has been done and it’s beyond repair. And Han knows now what he must do to make things right.

He attempts to reason with himself, to battle the surge of emotion that tells him to lower his blaster and call out—to try, one more time, to bring his son home. He knows in his heart that it’s too late, but the impulse is strong, and Leia’s voice is in his head. He scowls and struggles to remember the long list of reasons he has to complete this terrible mission, to keep in mind what compels him. 

It helps to focus on the practical aspects. All it will take is a slight pressure from his finger on the trigger plate, an easy motion that he’s repeated thousands of times, and the endless nightmare will be over. It will be so simple, and such a relief to them all, even if Leia never forgives him for it. He thinks he’d rather suffer her hatred than to see her tethered forever by futile hope, bound to watch helplessly as their beloved son—controlled by his evil master— slaughters billions across the galaxy, destroying everything they’ve worked so hard to build. At least, this way, there will be an end.

The figure is still moving away, and Han takes a few halting steps forward, trying to stay in range, trying to keep him in his sights. A bolt through that lanky body and Ben will drop to the floor, his journey to the Dark Side forever incomplete. Han imagines going to his fallen son, turning him over and watching the last of the light as it fades from those fathomless black eyes. Han will redeem and damn himself by the same act, and in so doing save the galaxy from a fiend. He just hopes for one last glimpse of his boy before he’s gone. 

His finger tightens on the trigger, but his vision wavers. He can’t dispel the other images that suddenly bloom in his mind, shrouding his view. A rosy-cheeked infant, nursing at his mother’s breast. A dark-haired toddler, holding onto his father’s thumbs and squealing with delight at his own first steps. A sleeping boy tucked between his parents in the bed, safe from nightmares for a while. A _good_ kid—clever, talented, resourceful—with so much promise. So much potential. So much love.

Now Han’s hand is shaking too hard to hold true aim. His target is still moving away—and abruptly the moment is lost. His boy has moved beyond his reach, and disappeared into the inky shadows like a wraith. 

Too late, Han remembers that he has another option, a different way perhaps to reach the child who’s been lost for so long. He realizes that it doesn’t have to end this way—with heartbreak, and his son’s blood on his hands. Filled with sudden hope, he reaches out through the Force, and calls:

_“BEN!”_

  
  


**-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-**

With a jolt, Han was wide awake. He blinked in the dim light, attempting to orient himself, to take stock. He recognised that he was in Leia’s quarters aboard her new cruiser. The spacious cabin was filled with the low hum of sub-light engines as they travelled towards the Hydian Way, the route by which they would make their way onward to the newly established Resistance base on Kodus, in the Nastasi system. They were two days out from Ord Mantell, with one more to go before they would reach their destination. 

Mentally listing those reassuring facts didn’t stop the pounding of Han’s heart inside his constricted chest, though. He felt nauseated and jittery, and recognised the symptoms of adrenaline pumping through his body, a primitive chemical reaction to the stress of the recurring nightmare. 

He sat up, shoved the blanket away and swivelled to sit on the edge of the wide bed, hands braced on his bare knees, trying to calm down. After a moment, he turned his head to look over his shoulder at his wife. Leia lay curled towards him in the bunk, her small figure faintly illuminated by the dim blue glow of the door panel lights. A glance told him she was still asleep, bare limbs tangled in the sheets, with her hair a dark swirl on the pillow. The sight of her soothed his troubled mind somewhat, and he drew a deep breath.

Easing silently from the bed, he made his way to the small fresher adjoining Leia’s sleeping quarters, and palmed the hatch closed before activating the lights. The mirror above the sink showed a mop of rumpled grey hair and bleary eyes, and Han wondered with a grimace when he’d started looking so old. As he went about his ablutions, he considered the dream.

It was a variation on a theme that had haunted many of his nights since the confrontation on Starkiller Base. In the days since Ben had tried to kill him, Han had dreamed repeatedly of the confrontation with his son. But lately, the nightmares had taken an even more sinister turn, as Han dreamed of turning the tables, stalking his own child and putting a blaster bolt through him. Although the idea was plainly repulsive during waking hours, his sleeping mind seemed fixated on the idea and kept replaying it for him on a regular basis.

His dream-self’s attempt to use the Force was a new—and disturbing—element of the nightmare, though. And now that he was awake, Han couldn’t shake the feeling that something _real_ had happened as result of his dream, as if he’d inadvertently stirred a presence in that invisible energy field and attracted some malevolent interest. He could feel something encroaching upon the edge of his consciousness, something oily and dark. As he finished in the fresher and turned to go, he shuddered and muttered a curse under his breath at the unfamiliar sensations. Although recent events had profoundly changed the way he viewed the Force—he’d certainly come to appreciate its power to improve his personal circumstances—he also recognized that his life had been much simpler before he’d tuned in to that mystical channel. 

Dousing the lights, he exited the fresher and moved silently across the cabin to the bed where Leia lay sleeping. He stood for a moment looking down at her, watching the subtle expansion and contraction of her ribs under her gown as she breathed. She was as beautiful in repose as she was in action, and even after all this time the sight of her still made his heart beat a little faster. Their separation had lasted far too long, starving him of this small pleasure, and he took a moment to savour it. His eyes roamed her figure, from the endearing glimpse of one small, bare foot peeking out of the covers, up the length of her exposed leg to the curve of her hip, and the twist of sheets trapped between her thighs and rumpled around her waist. He smiled faintly at the beauty of her body limned in faint blue light: the familiar curve of her neck and shoulder, the arm draped over her midriff, the graceful shape of her hand, and the swell and slope of her breasts under the thin sleep-shift she wore. Time and war and childbearing had wrought physical changes to her body, of course, but Han had been an intimate witness to her gradual transformation, and every one of those changes—to hair, skin and figure—represented the years they’d spent together and all they’d been through. Underneath those superficial differences, she was still _Leia_. And she was still his.

His gaze travelled to her face and he realised with a mild start that she was awake after all, and she was watching him, her dark eyes glimmering in the dim light. She gave him a drowsy smile, seeming as pleased to scan his figure as he was to study hers. He grinned down at her and shook his head, amazed by the fact they’d somehow returned to this place of love and intimacy, after the misery they’d endured. 

In the three days since his return from First Order custody, they’d been separated only by sleep. Even after they’d rejoined their companions, and “General Organa” had re-emerged, Han had remained within her general orbit, watching with weary resignation as she’d shifted back into war mode. There seemed to be a certain inevitability about what was happening now throughout the galaxy, with the First Order now locked in open conflict with the New Republic, and the Resistance with Leia at its head. Han had the sense that everything that had happened before was simply going to happen again, in an endless cycle of war and death that could never be ended completely—only interrupted and temporarily suspended. Han had recommitted to the cause, nevertheless, and he was more motivated than ever to help Leia put a stop to the First Order and the rise of Snoke—and their son, if it came to that. But he was still trying to decide exactly what role he could or _should_ play in the coming conflict. 

Leia reached back to adjust the pillow under her head then, and the sight of her languorous movement stirred Han to return to bed. He climbed in beside her, gently tugging her sheet out of the way to replace it with his body. Pulling the cover up and over them both, he drew her close and smiled faintly as she nestled into his embrace. He was still trying to absorb the fact that they’d travelled through hell together—they’d been ripped apart, in fact—but through the power of the Force and their own fervent desires, they’d been pieced back together. Leia wriggled against him and they settled into a comfortable tangle of limbs, with her head tucked under his chin. 

For a while, Han simply rested, breathing in the scent of her hair, enjoying the texture of her warm skin against his, the familiar weight of her hand on his side. Restorative moments like these that they’d shared since their reunion were going a long way towards soothing his troubled mind. Leia’s mere presence seemed to be recharging some hidden, depleted energy source inside him, as if he were drawing on her strength to bolster his own. Their newly discovered ability to communicate through the Force seemed to enhance the effect. Han drew a deep, calming breath, and sighed. 

“Another dream?” Leia murmured, tilting her head back against his shoulder to look up at him. He could feel her gaze and eventually dropped his eyes to meet hers. 

“Yeah.” He half-shrugged, and then hugged her closer. “Sorry. It’s still the middle of the night cycle. Go back to sleep if you can, Sweetheart.” 

She didn’t reply, but he knew she could relate to his disturbed state of mind. She’d been plagued by her own nightmares for years after her incarceration aboard the first Death Star, and those had only intensified for a while after she’d learned the truth about her father, the Sith lord who’d ordered and overseen her torture there. In their early acquaintance and throughout the first few years of their marriage, he’d been awoken many times by the dreadful sound of Leia moaning in terror, keening like a trapped animal as she lay paralyzed in sleep. At first, he’d felt completely useless, unable to help her. There was no one he could blast, no physical body that could be blown out of an airlock to make her feel safe. She’d been fighting phantoms then, and her own fear, and she’d had to cope with most of that on her own. But gradually he’d settled on a combination of methods—physical touch, soothing words, and a heavy dose of rationality on waking—that seemed to help. The whole process of dealing with Leia’s nightmares had become almost routine between them until eventually, after many years, they’d faded away. 

Han had experienced a few nightmares of his own over the years, many of them centred on the very rational fear of someday losing Leia—to war, to misadventure, or to her own overdeveloped sense of responsibility. In the aftermath of his rescue from Jabba’s palace, he’d suffered horrific night-terrors featuring paralysis and suffocation by carbonite. But over time those dreams, too, had evaporated. The long period of galactic peace they’d fought so hard to achieve had given them both space to breathe, to relax, and to believe for a while that all was well. Han had indulged in the dreams of his younger self with a brief but illustrious career on the racing circuit. And then they’d settled down, started a family. Leia had served the New Republic in the Galactic Senate, undertaking the role she’d always seemed destined to fill, and Han had established a thriving trans-galactic shipping company, with Chewbacca as his business partner. They’d lived a relatively normal, happy life together for many years. 

But the nightmares had returned full-force after Ben’s betrayal and their daughter’s disappearance, and Han had lacked the capacity to comfort Leia, then; he’d been too devastated himself.

“Want to tell me about it?” Leia’s voice, soft with sleep, drifted into his thoughts. She waited in silence, drawing her fingertips idly through the hair on his chest and down the centre of his bare abdomen to rest on his lower belly. Her hand was so warm, her touch so soothing, he could almost let go of the uneasiness engendered by the nightmare. But he couldn’t shake off the uncomfortable sensation that something or someone—some hostile entity—had been drawn to him by the desperate Force-fuelled shout that had ended his sleep. 

He didn’t respond immediately, feeling his throat close up at the prospect of trying to put any part of his dream into words. How could he ever explain a recurring vision of tracking down and killing their own son, the cherished child they’d created together out of love? The words were too awful to say aloud. He also rejected the notion of trying to convey the contents of the dream to Leia through the Force. He would never raise an image of such a thing in her mind if he could help it. Although they both knew what needed to be done—Ben _had_ to be stopped, no matter what the personal cost—it was an impossible subject to broach openly. Some things were simply better left unsaid.

Leia seemed to take his extended silence for an answer, and nestled a bit closer, placing a kiss on this collar bone in silent understanding. He returned the gesture with a kiss to the top of her head. After a moment, though, he felt compelled to speak, albeit on a slightly different aspect of the topic. 

“I think he knows, Leia.” Han chewed on the inside of his cheek, feeling irritated by the rising sense of anxiety he felt as he spoke. “I think Ben knows I survived.”

Leia absorbed that information in silence for a moment, then shifted to prop herself up on one elbow, and looked at him with a question in her dark eyes. Her unbound hair spilled over one shoulder as she leaned towards him, trying to catch his gaze in the dim light. “Why do you think so?” Her voice was soft, but Han’s practiced ear picked up on the urgency at the heart of her question. 

“I can—” Han squirmed internally as he struggled to say the words. He felt ridiculous uttering something like this aloud, despite his recent close association with the Force. He shifted his wary gaze up to meet hers. “I can _sense_ him.”

A wash of emotions rippled across Leia’s face: pain, longing and a residual bitterness that marred her otherwise lovely features. She gazed down at Han with profound sadness. “I can’t sense him at all now,” she confessed. “Not since the moment when he...when he struck you. I lost all contact with him then and I think it was deliberate on his part. I think he’s blocking me.” 

_I’m being torn apart._

Blindsided by the sudden flash of memory—of Ben’s haunted eyes and his ragged voice, so full of pain—Han flinched and jerked his face away from Leia’s gaze. In response, she subsided, returning to her former position beside him, one hand resting lightly on his arm. Her silence only meant she was being cautious, he knew, trying to avoid provoking an argument. Although they’d made great progress in terms of being able to discuss their son without descending into bitter conflict, they’d inflicted deep wounds on each other before their separation, and the new skin stretched over those wounds was still delicate and thin. Han scrubbed one hand over his face and drew a shaky breath. 

He hadn’t yet told Leia all of the details of his brief conversation with Ben on the bridge at Starkiller Base. Although the memory of Ben’s naked anguish was inescapable, forever burned into Han’s mind, he didn’t care to describe it to his wife. He opted instead to tell her more about his dream—at least, the parts that didn’t include stalking behind Ben with a blaster pointed at his head. 

“I called out to him,” he began, haltingly. “In my dream, I used the Force and I think he heard me somehow. And I can sorta _feel_ him now, trying...to find me. To reach me.” He couldn’t disguise the dread in his voice, the deep-seated doubt. “At least, I think it’s him.” 

He felt Leia’s body go rigid against his. Her fingers tightened on his arm. “Who else would it be?” 

The question was lightly spoken but he knew what she was thinking. In the darkest depths of his mind, he’d been thinking the same thing, but he couldn’t seem to hang onto the idea for more than a moment. It kept slipping away from him, like engine oil sliding through a metal sieve. 

_Snoke._

Without waiting for Han’s answer, Leia pulled away, threw the covers back and launched herself from the bed. Crossing the room, she slapped the controls to raise the lights and then turned to punch the button that opened the storage unit embedded in the far wall. Han sat up, squinting against the light, and stared at Leia as she rifled through the top drawer with focused urgency. 

Evidently not finding what she was after in the first compartment, she moved down to the second and then a third drawer, seeming to grow more frantic as she rummaged through the contents, carelessly tossing items to the floor in her haste. Dressed only in a short, thin shift, with her long hair a wild snarl down her back, Han thought she looked slightly demented. She dropped to a crouch and popped open the lowest drawer to begin searching through it in the same anxious manner. 

Mildly alarmed by her behaviour, Han finally rolled out of the bed and crossed the room to stand over her. “What are you looking for?” 

She cast a quick glance up at him and returned to her search. “Something Luke gave me, after Endor. Something to help me deal with my...abilities.” 

“Ah,” Han nodded his understanding. Glancing down at the items she’d strewn over the floor, he spied a few familiar garments; a pair of his old sleep shorts and a baggy shirt that Leia had retained amongst her own things. Something about her demeanour told him they weren’t going back to sleep anytime soon, so he snagged the shorts and started getting dressed. As he pulled the shirt on over his head, he heard Leia make a satisfied sound, and then she withdrew the object of her search. 

Han peered at it, then looked at her. “A hologram?” 

Leia stood up beside him, curled her fingers around the small disc and then looked up, giving him a short nod. “Yes. Something Luke made for me before he left for Commenor after the battle. To protect me.” 

“ _Protect_ you?” Han frowned. He recalled their time on the temporary base on Endor, where they’d more-or-less lived for four months after the destruction of the second Death Star. With the Emperor and Darth Vader newly dead, and nearby Imperial outposts wiped out by Alliance forces, Leia had been far safer there than she’d been in the five years prior. “Protect you from what?”

Instead of answering him, Leia fixed him with a speculative look. “What was your nightmare about, Han?” Her voice had taken on a slightly harder edge and her dark gaze swept over his face and body, as if trying to detect something not easily visible to the naked eye. 

Han turned away from that look, feeling distinctly uncomfortable and uncharacteristically tongue-tied. Once more, he had the sensation of thoughts and words slipping away from him, slithering just out of reach as his mind groped for a response. What _had_ the nightmare been about, exactly? He was already beginning to forget. 

“Han,” Leia’s hand was on his arm, pulling him with her towards the bed. “Come sit down.” 

He complied, though he realized he was scowling at her. His head ached. The lights were too bright, and he felt mildly nauseated. As he sank down on the edge of the bed, Leia settled beside him, one leg hitched up so that she could face him. Dropping the holodisk onto the mattress beside her, she placed one hand on his shoulder and the other on his thigh, as if anchoring him to herself. 

“Do you recall,” she queried softly, “how badly Luke wanted me to learn how to use the Force in those early days?” 

Han angled his face to look at her and nodded.

“And you remember how...unenthused I was about the prospect at that time.” 

One corner of Han’s mouth lifted in a wry smile at Leia’s understatement. He nodded again. “At the time, that was the closest I’d ever seen you come to being really angry with him.” 

“I finally made him understand that I wasn’t interested—and I _wasn’t_ , not then. I was just so happy and _relieved_. The war was coming to an end and we’d survived it. You were free, with no bounty on your head, and I was thrilled that you still wanted me in your life as much as I wanted you, even knowing who my father was.” She rubbed her hand across his back and leaned in close to rest her cheek against his shoulder. “After so many years of uncertainty, it felt so good just to _be_ together, to be _happy._ ” 

Han placed one of his hands over hers where it rested on his thigh. “Sure did.” 

“So Luke’s insistence on talking to me about Vader—and about the Force—hit a sour note with me then, and I just wanted him to shut up about it. But he was persistent. He didn’t get angry, exactly, but he was more determined than I’d ever seen him be about anything. He insisted on teaching me one thing, at least, that he felt was absolutely essential for any Force-sensitive person. You remember? The first thing I learned?” Leia swallowed hard, and Han knew she was thinking about their son. 

“Resisting mind control,” he muttered. “That was it, wasn’t it?” 

“Yes,” Leia confirmed, straightening up to meet his gaze once more. “The ability to stop other Force users from playing mental tricks on me, manipulating me, influencing me….” Her voice trailed off as they exchanged glances loaded with painful memories. Leia took Han’s hand in both of her own and gripped it hard.

Although Luke had taught Ben those basic skills, too, when he first began to show abilities in using the Force, and Leia herself had regularly reinforced the lessons in the years after that, clearly it hadn’t been enough—or perhaps it had simply been too late. Han accepted now that they would never know the whole truth about how or when Snoke had reached their son and corrupted him. By the time they, and Luke, fully realized the danger, Ben was already lost. 

“Tell me, Han,” Leia said in a quiet voice, jarring him out of his reverie. “What was your nightmare about?”

He knew then that he would have to tell her the worst, but the narrative wouldn’t come fluidly to his tongue. He raised his eyes to hers again and gazed at her for a long moment. The best he could manage was a halting series of words. 

“Ben. Me. Planning to kill him.” He felt a pang of grief at the look on Leia’s face as she absorbed his comments. He shrugged. “Realized I didn’t have to. I could just...reach out...and talk to him.” He drew a deep breath. “Through the Force.” 

“And you tried to do that in your dream?” 

“Yeah,” he sighed. “And then I woke up.” 

“And now you can sense someone...?” 

“That’s right,” Han replied. He gazed at her for a long moment, drew another deep breath and expelled it slowly. “And it’s not Ben.” He felt a touch of relief at finally acknowledging that fact aloud. 

Leia’s face blanched white at his words, but her expression quickly transformed into one he knew very well: tense, but composed and resolute. It was the look she got when she was preparing for a fight.

He felt his stomach lurch. “Leia….” 

She flashed him a look and then gritted her teeth together in apparent frustration, tightening her grip on his hand. “I should have realized the danger before now, Han. Whatever it was that made you sensitive to the Force, whether it was your encounter with Rey or if it was something else, it also made you _vulnerable._ ” She didn’t have to explain that it made him vulnerable to the same kind of corruption that had taken their son from them; in his gut, Han already knew that was true.

She shook her head slowly as if in disbelief, but her voice was loaded with a tone of certainty. “If you’re going to continue to have access to this power, Han, if this isn’t some anomaly or a temporary effect, then you need to be able to protect yourself.”

Han scrubbed his free hand across the back of his neck, but he didn’t argue. He’d survived over sixty years so far without engaging much with what he’d once dismissed as nothing more than a “hokey religion”, but it seemed he was not going to be able to ignore it any longer—not if he wanted to survive a few more years, anyway.

Leia released his hand and reached behind her for the discarded holodisk. She opened her palm, displaying it to Han. “I’ve kept this around because it’s one of the only recordings I have of Luke,” she murmured, looking immeasurably sad. “I watch it sometimes just…to see his face. I miss him.” 

Han swallowed past the lump in his throat. He missed Luke, too. The forlorn note in Leia’s voice echoed the dull ache in his own heart when he thought about his old friend and the adventures of their youth, and considered how much they’d all lost. 

“He always said that use of the Force was like handling a blade with a double edge,” Leia said softly. “It has the potential for good and for evil, in equal measure.” 

Han released a heavy sigh. He’d heard all of that before; about the two sides of the Force, and the alleged eternal, universal struggle for _balance_. He shook his head in irritation at that mystical notion. “Well, when he gets back, he can teach me what he taught you. How to resist this...whatever it is that’s going on.” A fleeting thought crossed his mind again, the dim acknowledgement that he already _knew_ what was going on: Snoke was somehow in his head, trying to manipulate him through the Force. The very fact that Han had difficulty voicing that reality aloud was alarming in itself. He shuddered, and clenched his teeth together, wishing he could just draw his blaster and put a smoking hole in Snoke’s ugly head. It sure would beat sitting here trying to fight off a threat he couldn’t even see. “Or maybe he can help me turn it off.” 

Leia snorted softly. “Turn _what_ off? The Force?” 

“Well, y’know, turn it off _in me_ ,” Han clarified. “Apparently, there was an ‘on’ switch. Gotta be an ‘off’ switch, too, right?” He offered her a crooked smile. 

Leia’s worried expression softened as she returned his gaze, then she leaned in and pressed her lips to his. Han responded keenly, lifting a hand to the back of her head and drawing her closer as he deepened the kiss. He relished the touch of her soft lips and the warm sensation of her affection washing over him. Through the Force he could feel both her fierce love for him, and her trembling fear for his safety.

When they parted, Leia’s dark eyes were glinting with mild amusement and her lips curved up in a faint smile. “I wish it were possible to turn it off at will, but somehow I don’t think so,” she said. “And anyway, we can’t wait for Luke. I don’t know for sure if they’ll find him, or if he’ll agree to return to us even if they do.” 

“So what are you saying? _You’re_ gonna teach me?” 

Leia nodded. “We’ll listen to Luke’s lesson first. Then I’ll help you.” As she spoke, she held the holodisk out in front of them both and thumbed it on, although she didn’t immediately engage the sound, seeming content merely to gaze at the image of her brother for a moment. 

Together they watched as the youthful figure of Luke Skywalker flickered to life atop Leia’s palm. Han’s eyes took in the details of the recording; he recognized the terrain of the moon of Endor and the landing struts of an X-wing fighter in the faint background. Luke looked impossibly young. Slim and composed, dressed all in black, with the Tatooine sunshine already leached from his hair and the bright spark in his eyes already beginning to fade. 

Han resumed pensively chewing on the inside of his cheek, pondering over his present circumstances and the opportunity being laid out before him. He couldn’t deny that his senses had been awakened to the Force, and as much as he couldn’t understand how it had happened, he also acknowledged with a deep sense of uneasiness that he had no idea how to control it. The feeling of disquiet provoked by that realization made his fingers twitch reflexively against his thigh, as if reaching for a blaster that wasn’t there.

He’d told Luke long ago what he thought of the Force and, in his heart of hearts, he still felt exactly the same way: he’d much prefer to have his trusty DL-44 at his side than to rely on some mysterious power that was invisible to the eye—a power that was difficult to understand and even more difficult to control. 

He stared in contemplation at the tiny figure of Luke; at the silently moving lips, the hand gestures, and the occasional, utterly oblivious, but reassuring smile. With a twist of bitterness Han remembered how blissfully unaware they’d all been back then, with no idea of what the future held in store. Not one of them, least of all Han, could’ve imagined how it would all end: with betrayal and pain, abandonment and ruin. 

But even as those acrid thoughts crossed Han’s mind, he heard another voice in his head, the faintest echo of his younger self—brazen, defiant and cocksure. 

_It ain’t over yet._

He gave a little nod of agreement with that sentiment. It was too soon to think about _the end_ , he chastised himself. He was still alive and he was free, and Leia was with him. They were amongst friends, and on their way to meet their many allies. Even more importantly, they would soon be reunited with the precious daughter they’d thought lost to them forever. That reminder sent a jolt of pure joy through his heart, and set up a warm glow in his chest that seemed to spread outward to all four limbs and to fill his head with a happy buzz. No, Han decided, they hadn’t quite reached the end of the story; not yet. There was more to come, and Han could still play an important role. 

Despite the fact that his access to the Force hadn’t been a conscious choice, nor something he’d ever desired, it was abundantly clear that it was a fact of life for him now. With even greater clarity, he recognized that he would need to learn to control it—or risk _it_ controlling _him_. 

With a sigh of resignation, he reached out and thumbed the volume on the holodisk where it lay on Leia’s outstretched palm, then hit the control to start it over from the beginning. He’d acquired other skills over the years and honed those skills through practice, he reasoned, so this Force thing shouldn’t be _that_ much different, right? 

“Right,” he answered himself aloud, his voice firm with determination, then glanced at his wife, who seemed to be waiting for his signal to begin. He gave her a faint, lopsided smile. “Okay, Sweetheart, I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s get started.”

**-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-**

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> Notes:  
> Thanks for all the lovely messages and reviews for _Remain in Light_ , but I think this is “it” for me in terms of writing _TFA_ -era fanfiction. I wrote 99% of this follow-up/chapter many months ago, but ran out of steam (and developed a strong aversion to all fics mentioning “Ben Solo” or “Kylo Ren”—even my own). Although I felt compelled to write in response to _The Force Awakens_ when I first saw it, I think I’ve gotten it out of my system.
> 
> So, I’m gonna stick with writing in the era of the OT for now...and perhaps venture a little bit into a brighter future for Han and Leia that will never include a corrupted child called “Ben” at all. To that end, I’ve written fluffier, smuttier fics on my own, and in collaboration with Sue Zahn (suezahn) and Justine Graham (justinegraham). Hope you’ll read and enjoy those stories, too. 
> 
> **Thanks to Justine Graham** (justinegraham) for the beta and the last-minute assist that finally got me to the end of this blasted thing. Now, I can go back to ignoring Kylo Ren. Yay!


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